(And Why You Might Already Be Doing It)
Here's a confession: You've probably been doing shamanic work without knowing it.
That time you zoned out staring at the ocean and suddenly understood something that had been bugging you for months? Shamanic trance. That weird dream where your dead grandmother gave you advice that turned out to be eerily on point? Spirit contact. That moment you were so lost in creative flow that three hours vanished and you emerged with something that felt like it came through you rather than from you? Classic shamanic channeling.
We just don't call it that anymore because, you know, we're modern and rational and we definitely don't believe in that woo-woo stuff. Except we do. We just rename it: intuition, gut feeling, being in the zone, creative inspiration, déjà vu, meaningful coincidence.
The shamans had better words for it. They also had better techniques.
What Actually Is Shamanism (Minus the Incense-Soaked Hogwash)
Let's get the academic definition out of the way first, then we'll talk about what it actually means for you.
Shamanism is a spiritual practice found across cultures where practitioners enter altered states of consciousness to interact with the spirit world for purposes of healing, divination, and guidance. The word comes from the Tungus people of Siberia (šaman), though the practice predates the word by, oh, probably 40,000 years or so. Cave paintings suggest humans have been doing this since we figured out how to make art on walls.
Anthropologists love arguing about the exact definition. Is it only shamanism if there's ecstatic trance? Does the practitioner have to be wounded or chosen by spirits? Must there be a dramatic initiatory crisis involving psychosis or near-death? Is it cultural appropriation if you're not Siberian?
Here's what I care about: the core technologies. Strip away the cultural trappings, the specific spirits, the particular cosmologies, and you find remarkably consistent practices:
• Altered states of consciousness (trance, meditation, ecstatic dance, drumming, psychoactive plants) • Spirit contact (guides, ancestors, gods, nature spirits, power animals, whatever you want to call the things you meet when you're not in ordinary consciousness) • Journeying (the shaman travels to other realms, whether you call them the Nine Worlds, the upper/middle/lower worlds, or just different states of awareness) • Healing and integration (soul retrieval, energy clearing, curse breaking, whatever the culture calls the work of making people whole again) • Divination and prophecy (seeing patterns, reading fate, asking the spirits what's coming)
Notice what's not on that list: specific belief systems, particular gods, cultural costumes, or whether you have the right ancestry.
The techniques are universal. The methods work regardless of whether you believe in literal spirits or psychological archetypes. The practices create real effects in consciousness whether you frame them as magic or neuroscience.
What Shamanism Isn't (Cultural Appropriation Alert)
Time for the uncomfortable conversation.
If you're a white person in America or Europe who took a weekend workshop and now calls yourself a shaman, please stop. That's not what you are. The word shaman carries specific cultural weight. It belongs to Indigenous peoples who earned it through years of training, initiatory ordeals, and community recognition.
You didn't earn it by drinking ayahuasca in Peru and having a vision. You didn't earn it by reading a Carlos Castaneda book (those are fiction, by the way, beautifully written fiction, but fiction). You didn't earn it by learning to drum and do guided meditations.
What you can do: learn shamanic techniques. Practice shamanic methods. Study shamanic cosmologies. Just don't call yourself a shaman unless that word comes from your own cultural tradition and you've been recognized by that tradition's standards.
The Norse had their own words: völva, seiðkona, vitki. We'll explore those in the next chapter. For now, understand that we're learning shamanic practices, not claiming shamanic identities we haven't earned.
Cultural respect isn't about political correctness. It's about not being an asshole. The techniques are universal, the titles are not.
Why Modern People Are Rediscovering This (Hint: We're Disconnected)
There's a reason shamanic practices are having a moment right now.
We live in a culture that has systematically severed every connection that matters: connection to nature, connection to ancestors, connection to the sacred, connection to our own bodies and intuition, connection to anything larger than our individual egos and bank accounts.
The Enlightenment gave us science and technology. Wonderful. It also told us that only material reality matters, that consciousness is just brain chemistry, that spirits don't exist, that meaning is something we make up, that we're isolated meatbags in a dead universe.
This worldview has produced incredible material wealth and equally incredible spiritual poverty. We're richer, safer, more comfortable, and more technologically advanced than any humans in history. We're also more depressed, more anxious, more isolated, more addicted, and more suicidal.
Something's missing.
Shamanic practices offer what modernity stripped away: direct experience of the numinous, techniques for navigating consciousness, frameworks for making meaning, methods for contacting what's larger than ego. Whether you call it spirits or archetypes or the collective unconscious doesn't matter as much as the fact that the practices work.
They don't work because they're ancient or exotic. They work because they're technologies of consciousness that our ancestors refined over millennia.
They're also having a moment because therapy isn't enough. Cognitive behavioral therapy is great for managing symptoms. It's not great for answering the question, "What is the point of any of this?" You can't CBT your way to meaning. You can't journal your way to the sacred. You need practices that actually put you in contact with something beyond your chattering monkey mind.
The Shadow of Spiritual Seeking (Or: When the Path Becomes the Prison)
Here's where we need to get uncomfortable.
Shamanic practices can transform your life. They can also become another way to avoid it.
The shadow side of spiritual seeking is using transcendence to escape the mundane work of being human. It's easier to journey to the Nine Worlds than to have that difficult conversation with your partner. It's more dramatic to battle demons in trance than to address your alcohol problem. It's more interesting to receive messages from Odin than to show up consistently for your actual responsibilities.
Spiritual bypassing is when you use spiritual practices to avoid psychological work. It's incredibly common. I've done it. You've probably done it. Everyone who's spent time in spiritual communities has watched people do it.
Signs you might be spiritually bypassing: • You're having dramatic spiritual experiences but your regular life is a mess • You talk about higher consciousness while treating actual humans like garbage • You're obsessed with mystical experiences but won't do the boring work of therapy or self-examination • You use "the spirits told me" to avoid personal responsibility • You're collecting spiritual experiences like Pokemon cards but not actually integrating them
The point of shamanic work isn't to escape your life. It's to live your life more fully, with more depth, more awareness, more connection. If your spiritual practice isn't making you a better human in ordinary reality, it's not working. It's just another addiction.
This is where shadow work becomes essential. You can't bypass the shadow by flying to the spirit world. You have to descend. You have to face what you've been avoiding. You have to integrate the parts of yourself you've exiled.
We'll talk about that journey more in later chapters. For now, just know: shamanic practices are tools, not escapes. Use them to face reality more deeply, not to avoid it more cleverly.
The Norse Connection (Why This Book Exists)
So why Norse shamanism specifically?
Because the Norse tradition preserved shamanic practices in a form we can still access. The völur left records. The sagas describe rituals. The runes survived. The cosmology is intact enough that we can work with it.
Also, the Norse approach to shamanism is particularly useful for modern people. It's not about achieving permanent enlightenment or transcending the material world. It's about navigating fate, working with what is, integrating shadow, and becoming more whole.
The Norse gods aren't perfect beings of light. They're powerful, flawed, complex forces who make mistakes, feel jealousy, fear death, and do questionable things for questionable reasons. They're more like us than the untouchable deities of other traditions. That makes them more useful for actual psychological work.
The Norse understanding of fate (wyrd) is also profoundly sophisticated. It's not determinism (you're doomed) or libertarian free will (you can be anything you want). It's something more nuanced: you inherit patterns, you're constrained by what came before, but you still have agency to weave new threads into the web. That's a much more realistic and useful model than either fatalism or fantasy.
And the runes, those 24 symbols that will become your constant companions if you stick with this work, they're gateways. Each one is a door into a different aspect of consciousness, a different pattern in the web of fate. Learn to work with them and you have a shamanic technology that's been refined for over a thousand years.
This book synthesizes three strands: shamanic practices (universal technologies of consciousness), seidr (specific Norse magical techniques), and runes (the symbolic language of the tradition). Together they create a coherent system for inner work, shadow integration, and conscious engagement with fate.
Practical Element: The Recognition Exercise
Before we go further, let's identify the shamanic moments you've already experienced. You need to recognize what you're looking for before you can cultivate it intentionally.
Get a journal. This isn't optional. You're going to need it throughout this book. Writing by hand, not typing. There's something about the physical act of writing that helps integrate these experiences.
Now answer these questions:
1. Altered States: When have you experienced consciousness differently than your normal waking state? This could be through meditation, intense focus, creative flow, grief, ecstasy, exhaustion, illness, or just staring at something until you zoned out. Don't filter. Write everything that comes to mind, even if it seems stupid or irrelevant.
2. Contact with Something Larger: Have you ever felt like you were communicating with something beyond your individual ego? A dead relative in a dream? A sense of presence in nature? A feeling that you were being guided? An intuition that turned out to be accurate? An imaginary friend from childhood who seemed weirdly real? Write it down. We're not judging reality here, we're tracking experience.
3. Healing or Transformation: When have you experienced sudden shifts in understanding or being? A moment when something that was broken suddenly felt whole? An insight that changed everything? A release of something you'd been carrying? A creative breakthrough? A spontaneous healing, physical or psychological?
4. Meaningful Patterns: When have you noticed synchronicities that felt too meaningful to be coincidence? Repeated symbols or themes? Dreams that predicted something? Encounters that felt fated? Numbers, animals, or songs that kept showing up?
Don't overthink this. You're not trying to prove anything or construct a coherent narrative. You're just cataloging experiences you've already had. Raw data.
Once you've written freely for at least 15 minutes, read back through what you wrote. Look for patterns. Notice which types of experiences come most easily to you. That's probably your natural shamanic inclination, your way into this work.
Some people are natural journeyers (vivid inner experiences, strong imagination, easy trance states). Some are natural diviners (pattern recognition, intuition, seeing connections). Some are natural healers (sensitive to energy, drawn to helping others integrate). Some are natural seers (prophetic dreams, precognition, knowing things they shouldn't know).
There's no wrong answer. You're just identifying your starting point, your natural gifts. We'll develop all of these capacities as we go, but it helps to know where you're strongest.
What Comes Next
This book is structured in four parts:
Part One covers shamanic fundamentals and Norse cosmology. You need to understand the map before you start traveling.
Part Two introduces the runes as shamanic tools. Each symbol is a door into specific energies and patterns. We'll explore all 24 runes of the Elder Futhark, learning to read them, work with them, and use them for divination and transformation.
Part Three examines the gods and the path of the völva. Odin and Freya are the primary shamanic deities, and understanding their stories gives you templates for your own work. We'll also explore what it means to practice seidr magic in a modern context.
Part Four dives into shadow work, fate, and the wyrd. This is where it gets real. Integration. Descending to your personal Helheim. Facing what you've been avoiding. Building a sustainable practice.
Each chapter includes stories, practices, and shadow work applications. This isn't just information, it's transformation. But only if you do the work.
The Path Ahead
Shamanic work is not comfortable. It's not safe. It's not always fun.
It will ask you to face things you'd rather avoid. It will show you aspects of yourself you've been denying. It will demand you integrate what you've exiled. It will require you to descend before you can rise.
It will also give you tools for living with more depth, more meaning, more awareness. It will reconnect you to the numinous. It will put you in contact with forces larger than your ego. It will teach you to read fate and weave new patterns into the web.
The runes don't lie to make you comfortable. The gods don't coddle. The shadow doesn't integrate without a fight.
But if you're willing to do the work, this path offers something modernity desperately needs: direct experience of the sacred, technologies for transformation, and frameworks for making meaning in a world that has forgotten how.
Ready?
Good. Let's begin.
This article is part of our Runes collection. Read our comprehensive Elder Futhark guide to explore the ancient wisdom and mystical power of runic practice.
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